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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
House Democrats keep options open as effort to oust Johnson grows
By Lauren Fox and Kristin Wilson, CNN
Updated:
7:23 PM EDT, Tue April 16, 2024
Source: CNN
House Democrats are divided over whether they would try and save
Speaker Mike Johnson , with institutionalists insisting that voting
against a motion to vacate could protect the body from devolving
into chaos mere months before a presidential election while
progressive members warn that helping Johnson now could ultimately
undermine the party with its base, which already may be less than
enthusiastic about showing up at the polls in November.
It’s a delicate call that most members are looking to House
Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries to ultimately make. But unlike in
October, when Democrats were unified against helping defeat the ,
this time the caucus is seeing schisms form. Many Democrats are
apprehensive about catapulting the House back into a chaotic
speakership fight during a time of tensions following the October 7
terror attacks against Israel, and a very different global stage than
what existed just six months ago.
“There is no way I’m going to let Marjorie Taylor Greene, , take
over the House. There’s no way I’m going to let Thomas Massie, who
has never voted to help any of our allies. He would let the Ayatollah
go right into Israel. He’d let Putin take all of Europe,” Florida
Rep. Jared Moskowitz said on CNN after Tuesday he’d join Greene in
her effort to oust Johnson. “There is no way I’m going to side
with these people, stand by while they let the world burn.”
Recently reelected New York Democratic Rep. has also pledged to
kill an effort to oust Johnson if it came to that on the floor, but
other Democrats – including one who held the same job as Johnson
– aren’t ready to make that kind of commitment.
“Let’s just hope that that does not happen, and that we can do our
responsibilities, protect and defend our own democracy as we protect
theirs,” said. “We want to take it one step at a time. But the fact
is that if would be shameful for the Republicans to go to the lowest
common denominator.”
Some willing to save Johnson, with conditions
For some, there is a wary willingness to stop Johnson’s
defenestration, but with conditions. California Democratic Rep. Sara
Jacobs said that Ukraine funding would have to pass out of the chamber
before she’d consider sparing Johnson an early exit from his job.
“If Speaker Johnson wants to talk to Hakeem Jeffries, I think we’d
be open to something like that. But I don’t think any of that will be
possible unless Ukraine funding is passed,” she said. “I think we
would need to see Ukraine funding passed before anything else.”
Behind the scenes, Jeffries has sought to downplay hypotheticals,
urging members in a private caucus meeting Tuesday morning to
understand the substance of expected later this week before weighing
in on how the process – or any aftermath – should play out.
But deciding whether to save Johnson could come sooner rather than
later. Unlike with McCarthy, who went on cable news and in the days
before eight Republicans led by Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz voted to oust
him – a move that irritated Democrats and undermined their
willingness to throw him a life raft – many Democrats feel as though
Johnson has been a fair negotiator in recent months.
In his short time as speaker, Johnson has worked closely with
Jeffries, the White House and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to
secure a series of must-pass spending bills to n, no small task for a
speaker who faced massive opposition to many of the bills from those
within his own party. Johnson also had to secure a path forward to ,
another bill that angered hardliners in his ranks, particularly after a
proposed amendment was defeated on the floor, including a no vote by
Johnson himself. Although Johnson’s policy vision is vastly
different from Democrats’ – he rejected the within hours of its
release and moved forward with an – many Democrats both publicly
and privately argue Johnson has been an honest broker since taking the
speaker’s gavel last fall, making them more willing to help him at a
time when they realize the alternative could be a much more difficult
GOP leader.
“If he’s a man of his word, and he has told me directly that he
intends to bring this package to the floor – if all the details are
there, I don’t see that we would have any reason, I wouldn’t
personally have any reason, to remove him from the chair,” New
Hampshire Democratic Rep. Ann Kuster told CNN.
It may not ultimately matter if Democrats are united or not. If only a
handful of Republicans vote to oust Johnson, only a handful of
Democrats would be needed to step in and help him keep his job.
With the Friday from Congress, Johnson will have just a one-vote
margin on any vote, giving each member of his conference the ability to
scuttle legislation they don’t like, unless he can get Democrats to
vote with him. Should Greene follow through on her threat of a motion
to vacate, and be joined by Massie, Republicans supporting Johnson
would make a motion to table, a procedural vote that would set aside
Greene’s motion.
And that is where Democrats would have to decide if they’d help
Johnson.
‘How often are we going to have to do this?’
Jeffries said last week he’d made the “observation, not a
declaration” that if the Louisiana Republican allowed the House to
vote on the national security bill, “I believe there are a
reasonable number of Democrats who would not want to see the speaker
fall as a result of doing the right thing.”
But some Democrats are adamant they won’t help Johnson under any
circumstance.
“I am a Democrat. Everything he stands for, I oppose,” Virginia
Rep. Gerry Connolly said. “It’s simply not viable for Democrats to
keep him in that chair.”
“How often are we going to have to do this? What do you think his
shelf life is if he’s the Republican speaker who lives at the
sufferance of Democrats, in his own caucus?” he asked.
Putting a Ukraine aid package on the floor – with the motion to
vacate threat hanging over him – would no doubt be Johnson’s
biggest gamble yet. The specifics of the aid packages have yet to be
rolled out, and most Democrats CNN spoke to said they’d need to
see those plans in detail before deciding if they’d help Johnson. At
the top of their list: a requirement that the package include $9
billion in humanitarian aid for people around the world, including in
Haiti, Sudan and Gaza.
“I am not answering speculative questions about what the
speaker’s fate is,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat from Connecticut
said, “For me, the moment is, how are we getting a national security
package on the floor of the House?”
“We’ve waited too long to get to this point,” she said.
But there are those who argue that Democrats can’t dismiss the
possibility that another speaker fight would devolve the institution
they want to protect into yet another tenuous chapter that could drag
on for weeks or even months. The last speaker battle raged on for
three weeks as lawmakers careened from one candidate to another, and
as members battled over long-held grudges. Without a speaker,
lawmakers can’t bring legislation to the floor or conduct other
business, a huge liability in a volatile world, members warn.
“We’ve been dealing with so much chaos and so much dysfunction
there that we would like to try to stabilize the situation as much as
possible so we can at least get aid to our besieged foreign allies,”
Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin said.
Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee,
warned that while it is ultimately up to Jeffries to pick the path for
the caucus, his preference is to avoid a messy speaker fight.
“Gerry is articulating a fair consideration which is how much are we
– who get called Bolsheviks and traitors and you, know, every name
in the book – how much of it is in our job description to rescue them
from chaos,” Himes said of Connolly’s view. “What we are here
to do is get big things done. And unlike Republicans, perhaps push our
partisan concerns to the side.”
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